Not a Reno but a Remake

October 18, 2022

Dismantled and said goodbye my 5g reef that was my introduction to marine aquarium keeping today.

All sand, CUC, corals and some of the larger parts of the hardscape have been moved into my larger 40cm cube tank (64litres/16USG), which itself already housed several bumblebee and nassarius snails and bristle worms. To this I've now added the strombus snail, cowries, hermit crabs, bristle worms and related cnidarians, and as much of the booming columbellidae as I could, from the smaller tank. It's a bit murky from the sand, but I cheated and used the old water for the sake of retaining the current parameters as close as possible - though it's not something I usually bother with when moving tanks about - and as a result the corals haven't been as as sulky as I feared they'd be.

Current hardware is a 200watt interpet delta therm heater, nicrew 50w hyperreef LED light, and the pump is a random spare I found in a cabinet under my 6ft tank 😂

Thought a new journal for this was in order, anyway; it's now my only full marine tank. Various factors have pushed me to go from two saltwater tanks, one brackish, seven freshwater and a koi pond to one marine, one brackish, five freshwater tanks and the pond.

December 20, 2022

few recent snaps of the zoas

i should do an update but life's been totally mental so no time

December 20, 2022

How do you get such nice photos of the zoas? Do you use your phone or a camera

December 20, 2022

This was using my google pixel 4a on nightmode with a D-D clip on coral lens. I've also got a macro lens I use for getting pics of my fish/snails.

December 21, 2022

shots of the last few months (in chronological order)

December 21, 2022

so as an explanation to the photos, few months ago I upsized the reef to a 16g, but then a combination of factors - got sacked so couldn't get RO as easily & health issues that made dragging big containers of water around hard, and money woes - encouraged me to downsize again to a shallow 5g. Corals, sand, rock, critters, pump, heater and light, and water from the old set up (simply because I had no RO at the time to mix up fresh saltwater) were moved across in one go, then I gave it 2 days to clear and 'scaped' it (if you can call it that). Because it is by a window and generally keep nutrients in the system high, I had persistent green water issues still however, but cleared this up with a 3 day black out. From then on it's been - knock on wood - quite plain sailing. The corals are appreciating the shallower tank for sure and I am finding the maintenance much, much easier, doing 20 - 30% every few weeks and every few days topping up with RO to maintain a salinity of 1.026. I target feed salifert coral food to the corals and throw some frozen meaty food for the critters (a hermit, lots of bristleworms, dove snails, 3 nassarius, 2 cowries, and a strombus snail) about twice a week.

December 25, 2022

RIP sherbert the dwarf blue leg hermit. 18 months of being a murdering little asshole yet your criminal ways be much missed

December 25, 2022

Saturday FTS ..... wondering where 2023 will take this tank.

December 25, 2022

Oh and good news, sherbet the hermit isn't dead!!! 🙂

Some other critter shots ..... Dove snails are breeding haha, zoas have more heads popping up than my reflection after 6 snowballs ..... The jasmine clove might look sad AF but it was thrown by sherbet late October, which coincided with me having a really bad depressive episode and doing no maintenance of any sort on this tank for 5 weeks (not even topping up!)

Miraculously nothing died. But over a month upside down on the sand bed didn't do the jasmine clove any favours. Happy it's not recovering.

January 6, 2023

new random shots. my new frags from jbsmarines seem happy.

they wont be staying dumped haphazardly on the sandbed forever lol dont worry about that

January 6, 2023

what are the all-orange zoas called?

January 6, 2023

No idea if I'm honest, sorry! I bought it months ago for a fiver; it was just labelled 'small soft coral frag'. They are cool though. Kind of drab looking until the full blues are on.

January 12, 2023

Look what arrived

January 23, 2023

icp results came back ok. no major issues, sodium a bit high, iodine a bit low, phosphates a bit high, everything else ok; need to do more frequent partial water changes but I knew that.

January 27, 2023

must not spend money on cool inverts

why do i like them so much??? goddamnit i wish i was rich

January 27, 2023

And don't get me started on the price of corals. I can't believe corals that were $5 -$10 at the LFS or free from other reefers now cost $20 - $40.

February 2, 2023

managed to push through depression slump to wc reef today. was aiming to do 10-20% every 2 weeks but haven't been managing it. everything looks ok though, even the montis have perked up now they're higher up/getting more light. zoas and pavona growing like weeds as usual

in the process of upgrading my brackish tank from 70 litre to 260 litre and was going to move fish/shrimp+filter across today but ran out of energy and went back to bed (lol)

February 4, 2023

On 2/2/2023 at 9:28 AM, InAtTheDeepEnd said:

managed to push through depression slump to wc reef today. was aiming to do 10-20% every 2 weeks but haven't been managing it. everything looks ok though, even the montis have perked up now they're higher up/getting more light. zoas and pavona growing like weeds as usual

in the process of upgrading my brackish tank from 70 litre to 260 litre and was going to move fish/shrimp+filter across today but ran out of energy and went back to bed (lol)

I’d love to see more pics of your pavona when you get a chance… very pretty one!